


Mutant Nightmare

by HamsterMasterSamster



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2003), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Canon Compliant, Family Feels, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hot Chocolate, Hurt/Comfort, Medical Experimentation, Nightmares, Platonic Relationships, Trauma, i feel like i should start tagging that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:47:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23971045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HamsterMasterSamster/pseuds/HamsterMasterSamster
Summary: He’s not supposed to be the smart one, but it’s all up to him to place his fists on his hips and dredge up that one repulsive word that’s been gathering bile at the back of his throat ever since he woke up choking on a scream.“Bishop.”Post-S3 Worlds Collide canon filler.
Relationships: Donatello & Leonardo & Michelangelo & April O'Neil & Raphael (TMNT), Donatello & Leonardo & Michelangelo & Raphael (TMNT), Donatello & Michelangelo (TMNT), Leonardo & Michelangelo (TMNT), Michelangelo & April O'Neil (TMNT), Michelangelo & Raphael (TMNT)
Comments: 23
Kudos: 80





	Mutant Nightmare

The steel is so shiny he can see his face in it.

Surgically spotless and gleaming silver, it traps his rictus of terror within a circle of threatening serrated edges, as much a prison as the coarse leather straps that squeeze his rigid body against the cold slab. The pristine state of the implement scares him more than if it was caked in all the vivid gore of its past violence. 

After it has split him open right down the middle of his plastron, will they scrape it clean again? Will there be any trace of him besides impersonal lab reports and bloody parts in neatly-labelled jars?

Jagged teeth become a smooth blur.

The suddenly spinning saw hasn’t even touched him yet but its droning roar takes a jackhammer to his bones, reverberating right to the very root of him. It stirs up a sediment of primal fear so powerful it stops his breath. Beyond the deadly blade edge skulk two chinks of frigid ice, caged behind tinted shades. They catch malevolent light from the sneering shark smile that hangs just beneath them.

“Michelangelo.”

An oil slick of a voice, arrogant and self-satisfied and rotten with casual malice. His own name feels like filth, slathered in those sewage-dank tones. He wants to reach out and tear it from his oppressor’s smug mouth along with a good handful of teeth and stop him from ever using it again. He can't bear the thought of hearing that sinister, grimy echo of himself forever after when his father calls for him or his brothers yell at him and what does it even matter since he’s never getting out of here because the _saw is getting closer_ -

“Mikey.”

Hope pulses through him - _that sounds like his brothers_ \- but its starved flame quickly gutters out. Beyond the glare of the medical spotlight that sears him, he can see the edges of the other three angled gurneys that held his siblings.

They’re empty, and so clean they might never have held them at all. 

Maybe they’re already in jars.

Fear for them wars with overwhelming fear for himself. He’s alone, and there’s nowhere to go. His muscles bunch so tightly beneath his restraints they threaten to explode through skin, and still the creaking leather won’t give. His heart judders away inside his ribcage, like it knows what’s coming and wants _out._ A refugee scream makes its tortuous escape from his dessicated throat, only to be swallowed up by the overpowering keen of the whirring blade. 

It tears into toughened keratin. The sickening resistance rattles him bodily against the slab.

_“Mikey! Wake up!”_

A weight against both shoulders - not restraints or pain but _hands,_ firm and familiar. Awareness breaks through the dark murk of his mind and he can move he can _move -_

Michelangelo chokes in a startled breath and heaves upright in a tangle of clammy sheets and flailing limbs. It’s an assault coordinated by panic, which is to say, not coordinated at all, but his graceless offence is no match for a rescuer who fortuitously happens to be a ninja.

“Whoa!” Donatello catches a fist on a collision course with his snout and squeezes it in his warm, firm grip until the thrashing stops. “Easy! _Easy,_ Mikey. You were having a nightmare.”

"You _think?"_ The words are breathless - and not quite as confident as he wants them to be. Michelangelo slaps his hands against his plastron, scouring neurotically for any incisions and grooves in the scutes that shouldn’t be there. The familiar ridges and contours of past scrapes brush beneath his fingertips, and a few newly-added dings and scratches from the efforts of the past few days . . . but nothing else. His insides are all still safely _inside._

So why does his chest still feel like it’s being crushed? He presses his hands flat against it, the frenetic thump of his own heartbeat tangible even through the tough plastron. Michelangelo focuses on his breathing, trying to rein in the unwieldy gasps that are still escaping from his mouth.

"Hey, you okay?" Immediate threat of accidental fratricide removed, Donatello hoists himself up onto the raised mattress with barely a squeak of springs. He’s a light, soft presence at the end of the bed; under the twin beams of his concerned gaze, Michelangelo feels a little calm begin to smooth away the rough edges of his lingering panic.

“Yeah . . .” Still doesn’t sound very convincing though. He drops his hands and his line of sight into his lap and lets them sit there a minute, but Donatello’s patient, _expectant_ silence is excruciating. He tries to fumble together some more words to forestall the inevitable questions, only to find his mind can’t keep hold of them - they slip through shaky mental fingers and scatter across the mess of his thoughts. Maybe there’s a good reason for that.

“Ugh, _Don._ I don't even wanna _talk_ about it.” He flops dramatically back down onto the bed, scrubbing his hands over his face. “What time is it?” 

“A little after eleven.”

" . . . at night, right?" 

His brother laughs, a hoarse, despairing contrast to that hopeful chirp. “I _wish,_ Mikey."

Michelangelo groans, leaving his hands glued to his face. A turtle-handful of hours of disturbed sleep isn’t nearly enough to make a dent in the adrenaline debt of three days - three days spent repelling an alien invasion, rescuing a dino-napped brother, being chased across the city by a horde of triceratons, _that part he doesn’t want to think about,_ and stopping an intergalactic war by the skin of their teeth, but losing the Professor in the process. Fatigue and a lingering sense of grief add an extra unearthly shiver to all his senses.

But the nightmare has left him wired rather than tired. As he waits for his heartrate to slow, he realises some of the pulses he can hear aren’t actually coming from his aching chest; the pattern of dull _thuds_ rings out from the centre of the Lair, and is familiar enough that it has almost escaped his notice. 

He frowns as he shifts his hands away. “Aw, shell. Did I wake everyone up?”

Donatello shakes his head, his wry smile lighting up in the gloom. “Nah. You didn’t make that much noise, and I've been listening to Raph murder his punchbag for at _least_ forty minutes.”

There is something brittle in his brother’s voice that doesn’t belong there, and it brings him up sharp. Michelangelo props himself up on an elbow and squints at him in the dim light. Donatello’s absent mask exposes soft brown eyes clouded with hazy exhaustion, and shadowed by dark half-circles far too close to his signature colour. 

A tug deep in his chest. The memory of just how painfully far the distance between them and their abducted brother felt as they stared up from Central Park into a sky crowded with tri-fighters.

"Are _you_ okay, dude?" he ventures.

A blink and he almost misses the way his brother’s mouth presses into a thin, self-controlled line. Without warning, Donatello plants his hands either side of him on the bed and lithely springs down to the floor. “ _Also_ don't wanna talk about it."

 _Touche_. Michelangelo maintains a sceptical glare for all of three seconds before it gives way to a very grudging shrug. “Guess that’s fair,” he reluctantly allows. Then the sheets are flying up, kicked off because even though he doesn’t breathe through his legs, he feels like they’re suffocating in that confusing tangle. “Well, so much for sleep!”

“You really ought to try and get a few more hours in.”

"And go back in _there_ right now?" He jams a sceptical thumb at the side of his own head. "I don't think so, bro. Besides, I don't see you taking your own advice.” Donatello doesn’t really suffer with insomnia, so much as he finds sleep a major impediment to Getting Stuff Done and puts it off until the last possible minute - but even so, it bothers Michelangelo that his brother can’t get his head down after the crazy-exhausting week they’ve had. Him especially. “Is Leo up?”

“I doubt it,” Donatello chuckles, one hand coming to rest on his hip. “You can set your watch by his circadian rhythm.”

Michelangelo rattles out a mischievous laugh. He launches himself with extravagant flair from the bed and lands seamlessly beside Donatello, slapping an arm around his brother’s shoulders. “That means there’s no one around to tell us off for poking the bear. C’mon. Let's go save the poor punchbag!"

* * *

The Lair would be silent if it weren’t for Raphael. Michelangelo’s surliest brother is fixed at his usual place near his inanimate sparring partner, and he’s giving it a good licking. Scaled fists, arms, feet, shins and knees rain an endless onslaught of blows against the battered leather, accompanied by stifled grunts and growls that are a bare attempt at ‘keeping it down’, in light of the hour. Donatello said forty minutes, and Michelangelo takes his accurate brother at his word - Raphael probably hasn’t moved or paused for breath in all that time. Between swings, his combat stance could have been carved out of stone.

“Has it cried ‘uncle’ yet?” Michelangelo casually tosses at the bear.

Raphael pauses, untensing by degrees from his compact posture as he turns toward his brothers. His eyes are a little wide at the sight of them.

“What are you two boneheads still doin’ up?” He runs a fist under his chin, eyes darting between them. “ . . . Did I wake ya? I was tryin’ to be quiet.”

“This time I think they actually did hear you in New Jersey, Raph,” Michelangelo grins, and endures a gentle elbow to the ribs from Donatello for his trouble.

“I was up anyway, couldn’t sleep.” Trust Donnie to be a little more sparing with El Groucho’s feelings. “Caught this guy tossing and turning and woke him up before he could scream the place down,” he adds wryly, to Michelangelo’s mouth-hanging glare of abject shock and agonised betrayal.

“Huh?” Raphael stares in puzzlement, his brow knotting. “He was fine when I -”

He cuts himself off, but it’s too late. Michelangelo’s face splits with the force of his knowing smile.

“Aww, Raphie. Were you checking up on me?”

Raphael doesn’t bother to deny it, but he does growl and turn around to give the bag one last solid whack. “You’re _both_ gonna be dog-tired. ”

“And you, Raphael?”

It isn’t Michelangelo who speaks, or Donatello. The three of them whirl toward the quiet voice, and only then do they spot the subtle silhouette in the shadowy lee of one of the Lair’s huge crystal-spackled pillars. Leonardo is sitting cross-legged at its base, his wrists resting lightly on his knees. The whites of his eyes are twin points of intensity in the darkness.

Donatello’s sigh of relief is quickly overridden by the disgusted cluck of his tongue, and Michelangelo performs a dramatic double-take, hand to plastron. Raphael, on the other hand, simply looks offended - or at least a little more offended than usual. He lays a hand against the punchbag to still its residual swinging. “How long have you been there?”

“A while.” Michelangelo has to squint to catch the fractional upturn at the corner of Leonardo’s mouth. “Ninja, remember?”

“Sometimes you take the whole ‘live in the shadows’ thing a bit too literally, Leo.” Donatello shakes his head. The startled tension is as slow to drain from his shoulders as the burst of butterflies dispersing from Michelangelo’s belly. “What unseen natural disaster disturbed _your_ seven hours?”

“Yeah,” Raphael smirks. “You wet the bed?” 

The customary fraternal sniggers last a good minute. Leonardo endures them with a long-suffering sigh, and waits a full three seconds after his brothers are finished being juvenile before deigning to rise to his feet - a ‘disappointed teacher’ tactic he’s stolen from Master Splinter. He pads over to them with his usual grace . . . but the confidence flakes off him with each step. 

“Honestly, I . . . don’t know,” he says slowly, and sounds a little embarrassed about it. “Just . . . feeling restless. On edge.”

The four of them lapse into an awkward silence, childish giggles forgotten. A fist of anxiety is lodged in Michelangelo’s craw, growing like a cancer in the void Leonardo’s words leave behind - and suddenly the oppressive weight of the elephant in the room is unbearable. He’s tired of pretending not to see its ugly feet pressing invisibly against their shoulders. Tired of acting like everything feels okay. 

It _isn’t_ okay.

“We all know why we’re unsettled,” Michelangelo says. “We just don’t wanna say it.”

They still don’t want to say it. They just pass a wary look between themselves like it’s a bomb they’re desperate to get rid of, letting the pregnant silence swell until Michelangelo’s ears threaten to pop. He’s not supposed to be the smart one, but it’s all up to him to place his fists on his hips and dredge up that one repulsive word that’s been gathering bile at the back of his throat ever since he woke up choking on a scream.

_“Bishop.”_

A flinch ripples through his brothers. Leonardo’s jawline hardens. Donatello’s mouth opens, releases nothing but a faltering breath, and closes again. Raphael’s fists clench so tightly that he hears the knuckles creak.

_Bingo._

The punchbag rattles with the force of a violent backfist. “What _about_ him?” Raphael spits.

“ _Everything_ about him,” Michelangelo shudders. He casts about as a thought strikes him, eyes settling hopefully on the couch in front of their TV array - but it’s empty, and a patchwork quilt is still neatly folded at the side of it. Untouched. “ . . . Leatherhead didn’t wanna take us up on our offer, huh?”

“He said he’d think about it.” Donatello’s hands twitch, and he listlessly hugs his arms to his chest. “He’ll come around. Friendly faces are exactly what he needs right now, but I guess he just needs some time. Maybe some sewer walls to tear down first. He’s been through . . . a lot.”

The silence lumbers in once more, and this time the spectre of what happened to their friend weighs it down like a pair of cement shoes. They only saw the aftermath of his suffering, and hovered worriedly while Donatello patched the crocodile’s wounds until they were shooed away, but Michelangelo’s overactive imagination is quick enough to try and fill in the gaps. Revulsion cloys in his chest, a potent mix of horror and anger on Leatherhead’s behalf . . . but there’s a selfish thought there, too, one that he can see mirrored on his brothers’ pensive faces. 

“That could’ve been us.” It doesn’t feel any better to vocalise it, but Michelangelo is nothing if not persistent, and he has a point to make. “We should talk about it. About _Bishop._ ”

“Why?” The demand is Raphael-ese for _back off already._ He squares his jaw, nostrils flaring. “There ain’t nothin’ to talk _about._ He’s just another nasty goon who needs a good kickin’. I ain’t afraid of him.”

“ . . . I was afraid.” 

That quiet admission comes from Leonardo, and it immediately steals the floor. Raphael rounds on him with open-mouthed astonishment but any challenge he might have thrown dies in his throat when he slams into the wall of Leonardo’s iron gaze. Even laying his vulnerability bare in front of them, their leader doesn’t shy away from their stares. His calm honesty and eminently reasonable tone defy any protest Raphael might have dredged up.

“Mikey’s right. We . . . should talk about what happened.” Michelangelo might have pushed for this conversation, but he’s still startled when Leonardo backs him up. “This wasn’t like any fight we’ve been in before. Frankly, it wasn’t even a _fight._ We were totally helpless. At his mercy. And he didn’t . . . have any. If it weren’t for Sensei, and April and Case . . .” 

Raphael huffs. “We’ve got through worse -”

“Have we?” A layer of grit takes the somber edge off Leonardo’s voice.

“Yeah! We _have!”_ One angry stamp of a foot thrusts Raphael forward into Leonardo’s space. “Like the time the Shredder almost _ended_ you, for starters!”

“Raph.” Donatello’s repudiating hiss is one of few things that can bring their most turbulent up short. “This isn’t a _competition._ ”

“And it wouldn’t count if it was! This was different. _Bishop_ was different.” The words to explain how aren’t coming, though, and Michelangelo loses steam quickly. He tries to tuck his thumbs into his belt, only to awkwardly plunge his hands into nothing because he didn’t put it on before he left the bedroom. Why’s it always hands you don’t know what to do with?

He’s glaring at them accusingly when a palm closes over his shoulder, and Leonardo’s solid presence settles reassuringly beside him. 

“ . . . Listen, Raph.” If their leader’s words are careful, infinitely troubled, then at least he makes a serious effort to take up the mantle Michelangelo suddenly finds he can’t carry. “The Shredder sent dozens of ninja to challenge me on the rooftops. When they failed, he sent his elite. They beat me then, but if they couldn’t do it? I’m sure he would’ve finished the job himself.”

“Don't act like what he did was honourable! What he put you through wasn’t a fair fight -”

“But at least it _was_ a fight! I know he hates us, but . . . he’s always treated us as enemies. As a threat. That requires a weird, twisted respect, in a way.” If acknowledging anything positive in the same sentence as Oroku Saki is difficult for Leonardo, it’s nothing compared to the anger and loathing that burns his voice in the next breath. “Bishop didn’t hate us. He didn’t feel _anything_ for us. We were just _things_ to him. A tool in his agenda. A means to an end.”

It hurts to hear it out loud. It hurts a lot more than Michelangelo was expecting, and he finds himself leaning a little heavily into Leonardo’s support. “But he knew our names,” he moans. “He _knew._ He made a point of telling us! And then -”

“Treated us like we weren’t sentient enough to have them,” Donatello finishes grimly, eyes glued to his fidgeting toes. 

Remnant dread stirs in Michelangelo’s belly. He rubs uncomfortably at one arm, not at the countless bruises of their escapades over the past few days but that invisible pockmark from a thick, industrial needle jammed forcefully through the scales of his inner elbow. 

He’s bled for enemies before. Spat from a smashed mouth, caught from a dripping nose after a fist or heel got a lucky shot - or sometimes, when he’s not quite quick enough, escaping from a short sharp encounter with the edge of a blade. But he figures that if they can get through the cyclone blur of his twin ‘chucks, then, frankly? Maybe they’ve earned a little red. It’s _fair._ Crappy for him, but fair. 

What Bishop did - what he _took_ \- wasn’t fair. It was a _violation._

“Do we need to be worried about those . . . samples he took?” Leonardo echoes Michelangelo’s own wretched thoughts, but the question is directed at one turtle only, and that turtle groans miserably and covers his mouth with one hand for a second before he can bring himself to reply.

“Why'd you have to ask me that? I've been trying not to think about it. I mean, probably? _Definitely_. Do you have any idea what a competent scientist could _do_ with that kind of material? Oh, man.” Donatello sucks in air like it’s the first breath he’s taken in minutes. “But what can we do? We don’t know where he is. We’d be too late if we did. Those samples, the scans and readings he took, they’re all out there now, a piece of us we’re never getting back. We don’t know what his plans are, although I’m sure as shell he’s up to no good! What if . . .” 

He goes quiet all of a sudden, and it takes a series of gentle Mikey nudges to the arm and soft repetitions of his name to bring his unfocused gaze back to the brothers in front of him. “What if he figures out how to track us down? Isolates something in our biological signature and finds us a-and . . . you said what happened to Leatherhead could have happened to us, but you’re wrong, Mikey,” Donatello whispers. “It would’ve been much, much worse.”

Michelangelo’s eyes enlarge like saucers. “How could it be worse?!” 

“Bishop did all that to LH when he was his _only_ mutant specimen. He couldn’t afford to lose him, or damage him beyond repair. He was holding back,” Donatello swallows. “With us, Bishop had _surplus._ Enough material to . . . try things. Make mistakes.”

“That’s enough.” Raphael’s voice is a dead whisper and he’s gone very, very still. A major storm warning for anyone paying attention - but Donatello’s too busy spiralling to notice, his anxious words tumbling over each other in a bid to escape. 

“He’s . . . Bishop’s our bogeyman, guys. That’s why we’re so rattled. He’s everything Splinter ever warned us about humans, and getting caught topside. About cages and scientists and labs and tests. We came _this close_ to being _vivisected_ and -”

“I said that’s _enough!”_ Raphael roars loud enough to make Donatello jump, his stillness decimated by a burst of aggravated energy that courses through every limb. “He’s just a guy, a . . . human _guy!_ You- you’re givin’ him too much power, talkin’ about him like that!” 

There’s a strangled, almost superstitious desperation in that last fumbled sentence, but whatever weakness it exposes is quickly sealed up again behind a veneer of dark rage. “Just _let_ him show up here. I dare him! You guys ain’t gotta worry about him ever again, okay?! ‘Cause next time I see _Bishop_ , he’ll be wearin’ those glasses on the other side of his head when I smash his face out through the back of his goddamn _skull!”_

The punchbag demonstrates, curling around a knuckle-driven _crack_ that makes the three of them wince in concert. Then Raphael is storming away, putting his shell and some distance between him and their bewildered stares.

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” Leonardo says quietly, tracing Raphael’s furious trail to the kitchen archway with sad, tired eyes.

“You would know the correct version of that quote.” Donatello knits his fingers together, looking sheepish. “Sorry. I, uh, didn’t mean to freak everyone out. Especially not myself. In my defence, Mikey started it. I’ll feel better once I upgrade security.” 

“Again? Don, it was good for us to air all this out, but if you think you're gonna pull all-nighters right now, I - uh, Mikey? Not sure that’s the best idea . . .”

Leonardo’s warning doesn’t alter Michelangelo’s sudden determined course away from them. 

“If you survive, at least grab me a coffee while you’re in there?”

“No coffee.” Leonardo doesn’t even skip a beat.

“Aw, _Leo_. Have mercy." A pause, then, softly: " . . . I still can’t shake this damn headache from that mind probe thing.”

A stab of worry makes Michelangelo pause at the kitchen threshold, but when he peers discreetly over his shoulder Leonardo has already swept an arm around his flagging brother’s shell. “Not selling me on the benefits of caffeine here, Don. C’mon.” Their voices fade to unintelligible background murmurs as he steers Donatello gently toward the couch. 

Michelangelo squeezes his eyes closed for just a second. The crest of a wave built up of everything they’ve been through, collectively and individually, teeters somewhere above his head, but maybe he can hold it at bay a little longer.

He steps into the kitchen. Raphael stands between him and the table, a rigid green monolith with hunched shoulders and fists like weights at the end of his trembling arms.

“Raph?” His brother’s head turns, and Michelangelo steels himself for the blow of those angry eyes - but if there’s anger there then he immediately recognises that the sharp point has been turned predictably inward. “Uh, it’s okay. To be a little shaken up, you know? You don’t have to . . . ” He laughs, his smile a little watery at the edges. “I mean, you can probably guess what woke me up. _I’m_ not afraid to admit I needed a change of underwear after our crazy-close call with the Man in Black.” 

He’s not expecting the flash of guilt and shame in Raphael’s gaze before his brother tears it away altogether. “Leo should’a let me go after him,” he growls at the table’s surface.

“Dude, we needed you to go after the Professor. It wasn’t important to -”

“Wasn’t important?!” Raphael whips around, almost choking on his hissed outburst. “After everything he did?! Bastard was gonna make us lie there and _watch_ while he . . . I - I couldn’t _do_ anything! _You were almost_ \- ”

He bites down on the words so hard Michelangelo hears the snap of his teeth. He looks away, jaw grinding furiously - and throat convulsing hard. 

_Oh._ Everything falls suddenly into place. Sometimes it takes a hot minute to work through Raphael’s blustery bravado and get to the core of the problem, but he thinks he gets it now. He steps in close and reaches for his quaking shoulder. 

“But I’m _not._ I’m okay, Raph. We’re _all_ okay. We’re _always_ okay in the end. Okay?”

It’s like being hit from behind by a treetrunk. Raphael sweeps one arm around his neck and drags him in hard, pressing him close with the crook of his elbow. He doesn’t say anything, staring instead at some distant point in the kitchen as though that might hold back the telltale shine in his eyes. 

It would come as a shock to no one, but Raphael doesn’t often initiate hugs. A half-dozen needling quips spring to Michelangelo’s mind, but there is such an aching fierceness in the embrace that, for once, he lets his brother have it without a word. He curls his arms up, palms finding purchase on the whorled scutes of Raphael’s carapace. His sibling’s grip is crushing, but protective. Reassuring. The wave hanging over his head shrinks back a little against the force of it, even as the tremors in Raphael’s shoulders begin to recede.

“Bad guys do always pick on me, though,” Michelangelo eventually sighs in mock-despair.

Raphael’s soft laugh is a blast of warm air against his shoulder. “It’s ‘cause you’re so annoying.” And just like that, the moment is over. He shifts his hand to grip the upper rim of Michelangelo’s shell, spins him about-face and gives him a shove towards the countertops.

“Hey!”

“Get the marshmallows,” he says brusquely, his voice just a little thicker than usual. “I’m makin’ hot chocolate.”

“Oh! Nice.” Michelangelo lunges for a cupboard, gleefully extracting a jumbo pack of fluffy white mallows that April donated to their stash a while back. “How many?”

“As many as you want.”

Michelangelo grins.

* * *

Somewhere under the mound of pale mallows that fill the tray are four steaming, sweet liquid hugs-in-mugs. Michelangelo dances back into the living space and by some ninja miracle avoids spilling them all over the flagstones. Raphael tails him a little more sedately with a glass of water and a fistful of painkillers, both of which are pressed insistently into Donatello’s hands when they reach the couch. Leonardo tuts and shakes his head at the extravagant excesses of the tray, but he doesn’t abstain from an unhealthy dose of marshmallow in his drink, so he doesn’t get to say anything. And his smile is grateful. 

It always takes some inventive shifting and contortion for them to fit on the wide three-seater at the same time, but even under threat of serious pins and needles, none of them seem eager to separate from the pile and use the extra chair. Leonardo and Raphael take up bookend positions, so Michelangelo finds himself squished securely between Raphael and Donatello, drowning in the oversized quilt they’d originally put out for poor Leatherhead. It’s fine, though. Safe. Warm. Some of the tension has gone but frazzled exhaustion drapes across them instead, heavier than the blanket.

They sip hot chocolate and inhale marshmallows as they settle, in a much more comfortable silence this time. Leonardo roots out the remote and, setting the volume low, flicks hypnotically through alternating static bursts and endless repeat news footage about the triceraton invasion until Michelangelo’s eyelids are drooping. Topside is a mess, no two ways about it. For once, he feels relieved to be stuck in a bolthole away from the chaos on the surface. Would be nice if at least one network opted for some dumb sitcom reruns in these trying times though.

The channel hopping pauses on an interview.

“It ain’t right, havin’ ugly dangerous _freaks_ like that runnin’ around on our planet,” a lantern-jawed, pot-bellied, assault-rifle-waving citizen complains to a dishevelled reporter. “Earth’s for us humans! They ever come back to New York, they’re gonna get what they deserve!”

The screens black out, cutting off the cheers in the audio. Leonardo sets the remote and his empty mug aside, a deep frown set in his face.

“Nothing on worth watching,” he says firmly. 

Donatello’s resigned sigh sounds centuries old. Michelangelo sinks deeper into the folds of the blanket. An unsatisfiable ache gnaws at his stomach.

“Everything we’ve done for this city,” Raphael says darkly. “For the _world._ And it don’t matter. It’ll never matter. Humans’ll always see monsters.”

Even buffered by the weight and warmth of his brothers, the distressing thought chases Michelangelo all the way to sleep.

* * *

A tantalising aroma drags him out of the deep, dreamless dark. His brothers still weigh him comfortingly down on all sides, so he blinks himself awake and tilts his head just in time to see April’s curious face rise over the back of the couch.

"Hey, sleepyheads," she smiles fondly. There’s a touch of unmasked concern in her gaze as she scans the turtle-shaped lumps hidden in the blanket. She frees up a hand to brush affectionately over Michelangelo’s head. "I thought for sure you guys would be up already . . . Are you doing okay?"

'That depends. Is one of those a Meat Feast Supreme?" There’s a big stack of pizza boxes wedged under her other arm, and the smell has him salivating. 

“Kinda,” she laughs, “but you’ll have to settle for the Meat Lover’s Paradise from Flavio’s. Phone lines are still down, and when I went on foot, Antonio’s had a triceraton-shaped hole through the front of the store.”

“We’ll take it. Pizza for breakfast! Awesome,” Michelangelo grins.

“I'm surprised you managed to find a place that was open at all.” His brothers are stirring now, murmuring slurred greetings for their visitor, but Leonardo manages to shuffle himself upright first, still rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Thanks, April. Hope it wasn’t too much trouble. How are the streets?”

“Awful! I hit up five pizza joints before I found one that didn’t have its windows or front door blown open, _and_ was actually serving. It’s crazy out there. There’s looting, buildings about to come down, roadblocks. Soldiers and cops _everywhere._ A lot of the undamaged stores are still closed - Casey’s having a hard time finding supplies to board up my windows. My poor store just can’t catch a break.” She throws a forlorn hand against her forehead, but just as quickly drops it again to dazzle them with an unperturbed smile. “Still, I figure since the world isn’t quite ready to show it’s appreciation of all your heroic efforts this week, I should try and thank you on their behalf. So it was really no trouble at all.”

She sweeps along the back of the sofa and plants four kisses, each atop a different bald green head. As she bustles into the kitchen to prep her feast, the gentle rumble of Master Splinter’s voice springs up out of nowhere and joins her softer tones in a distant cloud of reassuring ambience.

The heap of turtles sags a little in the middle. A mutual sigh of contentment emerges from the blankets.

“They ain’t all bad,” Raphael concedes. The way he submerges to his eyes beneath the quilt reminds Michelangelo of a wallowing hippo - cute, until it lunges out of the water and bites you in half.

“April’s worth a thousand normal humans anyway,” Donatello shrugs, already looking ten years younger than he did last night. Sleep and the promise of pizza are truly miracles.

“What about Casey?”

“Oh, he’s worth . . . five-and-a-half, maybe. Six if you can keep him away from the breakables." Michelangelo has to suck his belly in to dodge the poke in the ribs that Raphael deploys against Donatello under the blankets, disrupting his soft snickering with an indignant squawk.

“Y’know . . .” Michelangelo takes his time, churning the thought over in his head. “I bet there are more people like April out there in the city than you think.”

Donatello instantly scoffs. “No way. April’s special.”

“Yeah, but even she screamed when she first saw us. She still gave us a chance to be more than monsters.” A little self-generated hope starts to flood that hollow space that always forms in the pit of his stomach when he contemplates their isolation, and he throws an optimistic smile around at his brothers. “I think, given a real chance to get to know us? More New Yorkers would love us than hate us. I mean, how could they not? We’re totally loveable!”

“Us, maybe. You, naw.” But Raphael’s rejoinder lacks any real bite, and he’s unusually gentle when he butts Michelangelo’s cheek away with the heel of his hand.

“It’s a nice thought. Although, even if they didn’t, it doesn’t really matter.” Leonardo has that look in his eye and a sagely smile on his face, like he’s about to drop some ancient zen wisdom on them - whether they like it or not. “Our family may be small, but it’s enough. We have all we need as long as we have each other.” 

And he has the nerve to not even look embarrassed when Michelangelo loudly declares his sap-o-meter readings are off the chart.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm mid-rewatch of 2k3, and I just really, keenly missed a scene like this in Season 3. 'Space Invaders'/'Worlds Collide' all happen in one chronologically immediate big bang and holy hell are they just a little bit traumatic maybe?
> 
> Several of the subsequent episodes in S3 have the turtles dealing with how humans feel about non-humans (Raph finding Mrs Morrison in 'Touch and Go', 'H.A.T.E', etc.) so I wanted to touch on that, too. It was an important theme that season.


End file.
